Father’s Day: Media Is Major Challenge In Today’s Parenting – Afolabi

Serving Overseer of First Love Assembly, Pastor Simeon Afolabi has pointed that the media is a major challenge to parenting in today’s world.

Afolabi made this expression at the Jevinik Place, GRA, Ikeja, Lagos venue of the Sunday service of the church yesterday as he addressed fathers, mothers and children.

The Serving Overseer however encouraged men of the assembly who had joined fathers across the world to mark the Fathers’ Day.

“The media adds to the pressure and challenge,” he said, reminding the congregation how hard it was in the past for children to have access to contents meant for adults.

“In the days when most of us were growing, you needed to really go out of your ways to locate suggestive material if you are interested at all.

“Your mind must have been corrupted and thwarted already and that takes you outside the main flow to get any material that was sexually suggestive or destructive,” he narrated.

Continuing, he remembered that the Page three girl of the Punch in the early 80s was about the only ‘unholy’ content in the media then. “About the most we had those days was the page three girl of the Punch. I was one of the people who killed the girl. We kept praying. In those days you’ll pick an item and keep praying.

“We were praying ‘God let the page three girl be removed from the Punch.’ But in these days of the Internet, that page three girl we prayed against is holiness unto the Lord compared to today’s contents,” he lamented.

Afolabi, who was raised a Baptist boy said, “The media is a challenge to parenting. These days, with the click of a button in the sacredness and quietness of a child’s room, he has access to every immoral things you can imagine.

“There are people who have committed suicide by reading steps to commit suicide on the internet. Children under ten are already getting promiscuous and sexually active. In those days it was difficult to get any x-rated films. These things are resting with the fathers,” he said.

Reading from Psalm 127, Afolabi said, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain that build it,” stressing that parents must come to this conclusion.

“If you are into parenting, you must get to this conclusion that let God build the house. It is easy to pass judgment on the parent because the child is not behaving well. These days a child is not behaving well despite all that have been done to teach the way of the Lord,” he said.

According to the Serving Overseer, “What this suggests is that fathers must constantly go to the Lord in prayer with the names of the children in prayer again and again, claiming the promises of God.”

The cleric failed not to address the mothers and children in attendance. “Let the spouse ask these questions as well; I’m I making the work of the father easy? I’m I draining his energy? Do I give him reason to be excited or depressed? Then let them adjust to support the father in ruling the family.”

Afolabi also appealed to the children not to make parenting difficult for the fathers. “Children, I beg you in the name of God, don’t make life difficult for your parents. I beg you, it is not profitable,” he pleaded.